Top Posts Tagged with #valarr

Bastards, Royals and dragons: The Dinner

Valarr Targaryen X Dragonseed!Reader

Part six Synopsys: In which you have dinner with his family WC: 16k reader info / note: yn is a targaryen dragonseed, but her parentage is completely unknown on purpose so you can project however you want the only fixed thing is that you have at least one valyrian feature so silver hair and/or purple eyes, because it needs to be obvious you’ve got targaryen blood everything else is up to you, if the reader blushes it's because she biologically blushes not because the other characters see her blushing PLEASE READ; I AM REMAKING THE TAGLIST SO IF YOU WANT TO BE TAGGED YOU HAVE TO RE-COMMENT IT EVEN IF YOU'RE ALREADY IN IT PLEASE check out these GORGEOUS fanarts of moonfyre 1 2

Daeron Targaryen, was not yet awake when the maester knocked upon his chamber door. He was, in fact, deeply and contentedly asleep, his face half buried in a feather pillow, his silver gold hair more silver than gold now, he noted with quiet resignation every time he glanced into a looking glass spread across the linen in disarray.

Beside him, Myriah stirred. She had always been a lighter sleeper than he was, a trait she attributed to her Dornish upbringing, where the heat of the midday sun made afternoon siestas necessary and nighttime slumber shallower as a result. Or perhaps it was simply that she had spent thirty years sleeping beside a king, and kings, as a general rule, did not get to sleep peacefully through the night. Messengers arrived at all hours. Ravens came and went. The realm did not pause its endless demands simply because the hour was inconvenient.

"Someone's at the door," Myriah murmured, her voice still thick with sleep, her dark hair spilling across her pillow like a river of ink.

Daeron made a sound that was not quite a word and pressed his face deeper into the pillow. He was sixty three years old. His joints ached when it rained. His eyes tired easily after long hours bent over correspondence and petitions and the endless, grinding machinery of governance. He had been ruling for nearly three decades, and while he liked to think he had done a decent job of it, certainly better than his father, though the gods knew that was not a high bar to clear, there were moments, and this was one of them when he wished he could simply roll over and go back to sleep and let the realm manage itself for a few hours.

The knock came again, more insistent this time. Three sharp raps, deliberate and apologetic at once, the kind of knock that said I am sorry to disturb you, Your Grace, but I would not be doing so if it were not important.

"Enter," Daeron called, his voice emerging as a croak. He pushed himself upright, wincing at the protest in his lower back, and ran a hand through his tangled hair.

The door opened to admit Maester Gerold, he carried a rolled parchment in one hand, sealed with the dark wax of Dragonstone, and his expression was difficult to read in the dim light of the chamber. "A raven from Dragonstone, Your Grace," the maester said, his voice carefully neutral. "From Prince Baelor. Marked as urgent."

Daeron's heart gave a single, uncomfortable lurch. Urgent. That word always carried weight, especially when it came from Dragonstone, especially when it concerned Baelor. His eldest son was not prone to exaggeration. If he said something was urgent, he meant it, and a dozen unpleasant possibilities flickered through Daeron's mind before he could stop them. An accident. An illness. An attack. Something had happened to Valarr, or to Matarys, or to Baelor himself, and here he was, an old man in his nightshirt, receiving the news in his bedchamber while the sun was still dragging itself over the horizon.

"Leave it on the table," Daeron said, gesturing toward the small writing desk near the window. "And have someone bring tea. Strong tea. And something to eat, if the kitchens are awake."

"Yes, Your Grace." Maester Gerold set the letter down with careful precision, his chain rattling softly, and withdrew with a bow.

Myriah pushed herself up on one elbow, her dark eyes following the maester's retreating form before shifting to the letter on the desk. Even half asleep, with her hair tangled and her face creased from the pillow, she was beautiful. She had been beautiful for years, and Daeron had never grown tired of looking at her. It was one of the few things in his life that had never grown complicated or disappointing or fraught with political consequence.

"Urgent from Baelor," she said, her voice still carrying the warm, rough edges of sleep. "That cannot be good."

"Perhaps it is good news," Daeron said, though he did not quite believe it. He swung his legs over the side of the bed and stood, his bare feet cold against the stone floor, his nightshirt hanging loose around his thinning frame. "Perhaps Valarr has decided to come home at last."

"If that were the case, Baelor would not call it urgent." Myriah sat up fully, pulling the blankets around her shoulders. "He would call it a relief."

Daeron could not argue with that. He crossed to the desk, his movements slow and careful, the way an old man moved when his joints had not yet warmed to the day. The letter sat where Maester Gerold had left it and Daeron broke it with his thumb and unrolled the parchment.

The handwriting was unmistakably Baelor's. Neat, controlled, the letters formed with the careful precision of a man who had been taught to write by the finest tutors in the realm and had practiced until his penmanship was beyond reproach. But there was something else beneath the neatness, Daeron thought. A slight tremor, perhaps. An unevenness in the spacing that suggested the hand holding the quill had been less steady than usual. Baelor had written this letter in a state of some emotion. Excitement, or fear.

Daeron began to read. Myriah watched him from the bed, her expression shifting from drowsy curiosity to something more alert as she watched his face.

"Well?" she asked, when he had been silent for a long moment. "What does he say?"

Daeron did not answer immediately. He was still reading, his eyes moving down the parchment, his lips pressed together in a thin line. Then, quite suddenly, he let out a sound that was halfway between a laugh and a sigh, and he lowered the letter to his lap.

"It appears," he said, his voice flat with disbelief, "that there is a dragon on Dragonstone."

Myriah stared at him. "What?"

"A dragon. A living dragon. Pale as sea foam, apparently, with purple shades. Discovered in the eastern caves of the Dragonmont by a village girl." Daeron's voice remained studiously even, the voice he used when he was reading aloud from some particularly dubious petition. "The girl healed its injured wing. The dragon bonded with her. Valarr has fallen in love with her. Baelor has given his consent for them to marry. He wishes to break the betrothal to Kiera of Tyrosh and offer Matarys as a substitute. And he writes all of this in a letter marked urgent."

A long silence filled the royal bedchamber. The fire crackled softly in the hearth. Outside the window, a gull cried, its voice carrying across the rooftops of King's Landing.

Then Myriah laughed. It was not a cruel laugh. It was the laugh of a woman who had just heard something so absurd, so utterly unexpected, that she could not help but find it funny. She pressed her hand to her mouth, her dark eyes bright with amusement, and shook her head slowly.

"Matarys," she said. "It has to be Matarys."

Matarys. Of course. His younger grandson, the six and ten year old with his mother's hair and his father's sharp eyes and a sense of humor that had caused no end of trouble over the years. Matarys, who had once convinced half the servants that the Red Keep was haunted by the ghost of a princess. Matarys, who had sent a letter to his uncle Maekar claiming that the King had decided to abdicate and become a septon. Matarys, who loved jokes and pranks and mischief with the pure, uncomplicated joy of a boy who had never quite grown out of being a child.

"That little wretch," Daeron said, but there was no real anger in his voice. In truth, he was almost relieved. A dragon. A village girl. A broken betrothal. If Baelor had genuinely written such a letter, it would have meant his eldest son had lost his mind entirely. But Matarys—Matarys writing an absurd letter in his father's hand, using his father's seal, sending it to King's Landing in the middle of the night—that made a great deal more sense. It was exactly the sort of thing Matarys would find hilarious.

"Read it to me," Myriah said, settling back against her pillows, her dark eyes still sparkling with amusement. "I want to hear every word."

Daeron read about the girl approaching Baelor at the petitions, about Baelor's disbelief, about the shame he claimed to feel. He read about the dragon's name—Moonfyre, a name that sounded suspiciously like something Matarys would invent, poetic and slightly overwrought—and about the bond between the girl and the creature. He read about Valarr falling in love, about Baelor offering the girl silver to disappear, about Valarr abdicating his claim to the throne.

"Abdicated," Myriah repeated, when he reached that part. "Valarr abdicated. For a village girl with goats."

"Apparently so."

"That is quite romantic."

"It is quite absurd."

Daeron read on. The letter grew more elaborate as it went, weaving in details about Tyrosh and Kiera, about Matarys being offered as a substitute husband, about the political implications of a dragon returning to House Targaryen after seventy years. The final paragraphs were almost poetic, speaking of hope and fire and the blood of Old Valyria, of children who would be trueborn Targaryens, of eggs that might hatch and dragons that might fill the skies once more.

When he finished, he set the letter down on the desk and looked at his wife. She was smiling, a small, knowing smile that he had seen a thousand times before and still could not entirely interpret.

"Well," she said. "That was quite the tale."

"It was quite something," Daeron agreed. "Though I am not certain Matarys wrote it."

"No?"

"The handwriting is too good. You know Matarys's penmanship—it looks like a spider fell in an inkpot and crawled across the page. This is Baelor's hand, or a very convincing forgery."

"Then perhaps Baelor wrote it as a joke."

Daeron considered this. Baelor was not known for his sense of humor. He was a serious man, a dutiful man, a man who had spent his entire life doing what was expected of him without complaint or deviation. But perhaps that was precisely what made the joke effective. Perhaps Baelor, exhausted by months on Dragonstone and desperate to return to King's Landing, had decided to write the most ridiculous letter he could conceive of as a way of expressing his frustration. A dragon. A village girl. A love story. A broken betrothal. It was all so patently absurd that it had to be intentional.

"Perhaps," Daeron said slowly, "this is Baelor's way of telling me he needs to come home. He has been on Dragonstone too long. The petitions could have been handled in a fortnight, but he has been there for months. He is bored. He is tired. He wants me to summon him back, and this is his way of asking."

"That is a very elaborate way of asking."

"Baelor has always been thorough."

Myriah laughed again, softer this time, and reached for the cup of water on her bedside table. "What are you going to tell him?"

Daeron looked at the letter again. "I am going to write him back," Daeron said, rising from the desk and crossing to the door to call for a servant. "I am going to tell him that I have read his letter, that I found it very amusing, and that he is to return to King's Landing at once."

"That is all?"

"That is all. If he wants to tell me more about this dragon and this village girl, he can do so in person. I am not going to conduct a serious diplomatic conversation about imaginary creatures through raven post."

Myriah smiled, settling back against her pillows. "You do not think you are being too dismissive?"

"I think I am being appropriately dismissive." Daeron returned to the bed and sat down heavily on the edge of the mattress, his hand finding Myriah's beneath the blankets. "There is no dragon, Myriah. There is no village girl. There is only my son, who has been on a dreary island for too long and has lost his patience, and my grandson, who has fallen in with some local girl and convinced his father to let him out of his betrothal. The rest is embellishment."

"And if you are wrong?"

"I am not wrong."

"But if you are?"

Daeron looked at her. Her dark eyes were steady, her expression unreadable. She had always been the one to see possibilities he overlooked, to consider angles he dismissed, to remind him that the world was stranger and more complicated than his logical mind wanted it to be.

"If I am wrong," he said slowly, "then there is a dragon on Dragonstone, and my son has written me a letter that will be studied by maesters for centuries, and I have just dismissed it as a prank. In which case, I will owe him an apology. A very large apology."

"A very large apology indeed."

"But I am not wrong."

Myriah smiled and leaned over to press a kiss to his cheek. "Of course you are not, my love. You are the King. Kings are never wrong."

Daeron snorted. "Now you are mocking me."

"I have been mocking you for years. You have only just noticed?"

He laughed, a warm sound that filled the quiet chamber, he rose from the bed, crossed to the writing desk, and pulled out a fresh sheet of parchment. The reply did not need to be long. A few lines, perhaps. Enough to acknowledge the letter without taking it seriously, to summon Baelor home without indulging the fantasy. He dipped his quill in ink and began to write.

To my son Baelor, Prince of Dragonstone,

Your letter reached me this morning. I read it with great interest and no small amount of amusement. The attention to detail is commendable, and I must congratulate whoever composed it—whether that was you, which would surprise me, or Matarys, which would not.

I am pleased to hear that Dragonstone has been treating you so well that you have found time to invent elaborate fictions. However, your presence is required in King's Landing. The small council has been managing without you, but there are matters that require your attention, and I am too old to handle all of them myself.

Bring Valarr with you. Bring Matarys as well, if he wishes to come. If the village girl exists—and I remain skeptical on that point—you may bring her too, though I cannot promise I will believe a word of this story until I see proof with my own eyes.

As for the betrothal, we will discuss it when you return. I am not inclined to break an alliance with Tyrosh on the basis of a letter that reads like a bard's tale, but I am willing to hear you out. If Valarr has genuinely fallen in love, there may be other ways to address the situation that do not involve inventing dragons.

Come home, Baelor. You have been on that island long enough.

With affection and considerable skepticism,

Your father,

Daeron

—

The morning light through the narrow windows of Dragonstone's eastern corridor turned the stone to smoke and honey, and you were still not entirely certain how Valarr had managed to get you here.

No—that was untrue. You knew exactly how he had managed it. He had woken you at dawn with a kiss pressed to the hinge of your jaw, and then another to the corner of your mouth, and then another to your forehead when you had tried to bury your face in the pillow and pretend you were still asleep. Marta had grumbled from her corner of the cottage that if the two of you did not stop whispering and giggling like children she would throw her medicine pot at your heads, and Valarr had muffled his laughter against your shoulder and held you tighter, his arm a warm weight across your stomach.

He had whispered that the tailor was waiting, that your grey wool dress had a tear in the sleeve that Marta had mended three times already, that if you were going to keep flying Moonfyre you needed proper clothes and not garments held together by hope and old thread. You had grumbled that you liked your grey dress. He had kissed you again, this time on the tip of your nose, and said he liked it too, but he would like it even more if it did not disintegrate the next time you climbed onto a dragon's back.

You had told him he was being ridiculous. He had agreed amiably and continued kissing you, your cheek, your temple, the corner of your jaw, until Marta had actually thrown a slipper at him and told him to get out of her house if he was going to behave like a lovesick boy instead of a prince. He had apologized with exaggerated formality, but his eyes had been laughing, and when he turned back to you he had whispered, "The tailor. Please. For my sanity," and you had finally agreed, if only to make him stop looking at you with those mismatched eyes that made you feel as though your bones were turning to warm milk.

So here you were, walking the corridors of the castle that had loomed over your village your entire life, your hand tucked into the crook of Valarr's elbow. The tailor had been efficient and terrifying an old man with pins in his mouth and spectacles perched on his nose, who had clucked over you like a hen with one chick and complained that you had the posture of someone who spent too much time hunched over goats. He had measured everything. Every span of your arms, every width of your shoulders, every length from hip to ankle and elbow to wrist. He had draped fabric over you in shades of deep purple and storm blue and a particular dark red that Valarr had picked out himself, holding it up to your cheek and nodding as though he had just solved some important political crisis.

Now the measuring was done, and Valarr was leading you through the castle instead of back toward the village gates.

"I received another letter from Matarys this morning," he said, his voice carrying that particular mixture of exasperation and fondness that only his younger brother seemed able to provoke. "The third one this week. He has taken to sending them by raven, which is absurd—he could simply walk send a servant, but he claims a raven carries more dramatic weight."

You smiled. "What does he want?"

"The same thing he has wanted since you came back. To meet you. To meet Moonfyre." Valarr sighed, his free hand coming up to rub at the back of his neck. "He writes that he is perishing of neglected curiosity, and that if I do not introduce him within the fortnight he will be forced to take drastic measures. What those measures are, he does not specify, which I find deeply unsettling."

"He sounds very dramatic."

"He is insufferable," Valarr said, but his voice was warm. "Father has forbidden it, of course. He does not want you overwhelmed, and he knows Matarys has all the subtlety of a battering ram. When you meet him, and you will meet him eventually, he wants it to be on your terms, not because my brother has ambushed you in some corridor."

"I appreciate that," you said, and meant it. The thought of meeting more of Valarr's family made your stomach tighten, but the thought of meeting them when you were prepared, when you had warning and time to steady yourself, was easier to bear.

"He will adore you," Valarr said quietly and his hand tightened over yours where it rested in the crook of his arm.

They turned a corner, and the corridor changed. The stone here was older, rougher hewn, the torches fewer and farther between. You slowed, glancing up at Valarr in confusion, but he only tightened his arm against his side, pressing your hand more firmly into the crook of his elbow.

"There is something I want to show you," he said.

"More tailors?"

"Nothing so dire, I promise."

He led you down a narrow flight of stairs, then another, the air growing cooler and damper with each step. The walls dripped in places, dark with moisture, and the torches were spaced so far apart that you walked through pools of shadow between each one. The steps were worn smooth in the center, grooved by centuries of feet, and you found yourself wondering how many Targaryens had walked this same path, and what they had been going to see, and whether any of them had been village girls with no name and no family and a dragon who purred when scratched behind the eye ridge.

At the bottom of the stairs, a heavy door of iron-banded oak stood slightly ajar. Valarr pushed it open with his shoulder and ushered you through. The chamber beyond was not large, but it was full. Shelves lined the walls from floor to ceiling, crammed with objects draped in oilcloth and dust. The air smelled of old leather and metal and something sharper beneath—the faint, acrid tang of dragon, though you did not recognize it at first. It was only when Valarr crossed to the center of the room and pulled away a heavy canvas sheet that you understood.

They were saddles. Dragon saddles. They rested on great wooden stands, three of them arranged in a loose semicircle like ancient thrones awaiting occupants who would never return. The leather was cracked and dark with age, the metal fittings dulled by time, but the shapes were unmistakable. Not the light, simple saddles that horses wore, these were massive, built like siege weapons, all deep seats and high backs and heavy straps that looked more suited to anchoring a ship than securing a rider. The buckles were iron, some rusted, some wrapped in remnants of what might once have been decorative tooling. One saddle still bore faint traces of gilding along its pommel, the gold flaking away like autumn leaves.

"This one was Sunfyre's," Valarr said, touching the edge of a saddle that gleamed dully in the torchlight, its leather the color of old coins. "Or so the records claim. It is difficult to be certain—so much was lost during the Dance. Saddles burned with their riders, or were broken apart for leather and metal when the dragons died and no one thought to preserve anything." He moved to the next, and his voice softened. "This one belonged to Syrax."

You stepped closer before you meant to. Syrax's saddle was beautiful in a way that made your chest ache. Even beneath the dust and the cracks and the slow decay of years, you could see it, the intricate patterns worked into the leather, the fittings that looked almost like gold, the delicate filigree along the backrest that must have taken someone months to complete. It was opulent and feminine and utterly unlike the heavy, warlike saddles beside it. It looked like something a queen would ride.

"Rhaenyra's dragon," you said quietly.

"Yes." Valarr's hand hovered over the pommel without touching it. "She rode Syrax when she took King's Landing. And later—well. You know the histories."

You did. You had read them in the book he gave you, sounding out the words while his shoulder pressed warm against yours. Syrax had died in the Dragonpit, torn apart by the smallfolk who rose against Rhaenyra. The saddle had outlived the dragon. That seemed wrong, somehow. That leather and metal could endure when fire and wings could not.

"There is more," Valarr said, turning to face you. The torchlight caught the silver streak in his hair, made his pale eye gleam like a coin. "That is not why I brought you here. I brought you here because—" He stopped, and for a moment he looked almost uncertain, which was such an unusual expression on his face that you felt your heart clench. "Because I want to commission a saddle for you. For Moonfyre."

You opened your mouth, but he was already speaking again, the words tumbling out faster now.

"I cannot watch you fly anymore without one. Every time you climb onto her back with nothing but your hands and your legs and your stubbornness, I feel as though my heart is going to stop. You hold on with strength alone, and you are strong—stronger than anyone I have ever met—but strength fails. A saddle would not. A saddle would keep you secure through dives and climbs and whatever else Moonfyre decides to do. A saddle would—"

"Valarr—"

"—mean that I could watch you fly without feeling as though I am going to be sick from terror. A saddle would mean that if something happened, if she banked too sharply or you lost your grip, you would not—"

"Valarr."

He stopped. His hands were at his sides, clenched into loose fists, and his chest was rising and falling too quickly. He looked at you with those eyes and you could see the guilt there, the fear, the thing he still carried from the weeks when he had not believed you. It had not gone away. You were not certain it ever would.

"You are frightened for me," you said.

"Of course I am frightened for you." His voice was raw at the edges, scraped clean of princely composure. "I am frightened for you every moment you are in the air. I am frightened for you when you are on the ground and Moonfyre is not with you and I think about all the things that could happen, all the people who might want to hurt her or take her or use you to get to her. I am frightened for you when you are asleep and I am watching you breathe and I think about how close I came to losing you before I ever truly had you." He stepped closer, close enough that you could feel the warmth of him through your new grey dress. "So yes. I am frightened for you. And I am asking you—asking, not commanding, I would never command you—to let me do this one thing that might make you a little safer. Please."

The word hung in the dusty air between you. A prince, begging. For you. You looked at the saddles again and tried to imagine yourself sitting in something like that, strapped into leather and steel, secured against the sky. Moonfyre was warm beneath you when you flew. Moonfyre was solid and alive and always, always careful with you, even when she dove or climbed or twisted through the air like a ribbon in the wind. The thought of putting something between you, something hard and unyielding, made your stomach clench.

"It might hurt her," you said quietly. "The straps. The weight. She has never carried anything but me. What if she hates it? What if it rubs her scales raw or catches on her spines or—"

"Moonfyre," Valarr said, and his voice was gentler now, some of the urgency draining out of it, "is a dragon. She carried you across the sea and back. She fought off infection and crooked bones and months of pain. A saddle will not hurt her. A properly fitted saddle, made by craftsmen who know what they are doing—she will barely feel it."

"You do not know that."

"I do not know that," he agreed. "But I know that the old riders saddled their dragons, and the dragons did not suffer for it. I know that Sunfyre carried Aegon through battle after battle with a saddle on his back, and it did not slow him down. I know that Syrax bore Rhaenyra for years, and the saddle was part of them, part of the bond, not a barrier between them."

You traced your fingers along the edge of Syrax's saddle. The leather was cold and brittle, flaking slightly beneath your touch. You thought of the craftsmen who had made it, the hours of careful work, the pride they must have felt when they saw it strapped to a dragon's back. You thought of Valarr, standing beside you in this dusty chamber, pleading with you to let him keep you safe.

"Moonfyre might like it," Valarr said softly. "If it means you can fly longer. Fly farther. Go places you have never been without your arms giving out halfway across the bay."

That was unfair. He knew it was unfair. You could see it in the slight quirk of his mouth, the way his pale eye caught the torchlight. He was appealing to the part of you that wanted to see the world from dragonback, that had tasted freedom on that unknown island and wanted more of it, that dreamed sometimes of flying west until you reached the edge of the map and saw what lay beyond.

"You are manipulating me," you said.

"I am reasoning with you."

"You are manipulating me with reasoning."

"Is it working?"

You wanted to stay cross with him. You wanted to hold onto your uncertainty, your fear for Moonfyre's comfort, your stubborn village-girl conviction that you did not need fine things or special treatment or princes who commissioned saddles for you. But he was looking at you with those eyes and you could feel your resolve crumbling like the gilding on Syrax's pommel.

"If Moonfyre hates it," you said slowly, "I will not make her wear it. Not even if it is the finest saddle ever made. Not even if you beg."

"Agreed."

"And if it hurts her—if there is even a single scale rubbed raw, a single moment where she seems uncomfortable—it comes off and I do not put it back on."

"Agreed."

"And you stop hovering every time I fly. You let me go without looking as though you are about to be sick."

He hesitated at that, his jaw tightening, and you knew you had found the limit of his willingness to negotiate. But after a moment he nodded, a short, sharp jerk of his head that was more concession than agreement.

"I will try," he said. "I cannot promise I will succeed."

"That is all I ask."

He reached for you then, his hands finding your waist and pulling you gently toward him. You went willingly, letting yourself be drawn into the circle of his arms, letting your forehead rest against his collarbone. He smelled of salt and leather and something else, something warm and clean that you had come to associate with him alone. His chin came to rest on the top of your head.

"Thank you," he said, and the words vibrated through his chest into your bones.

"You are very difficult to refuse," you mumbled into his tunic.

"I know. I have been practicing."

You laughed despite yourself, a small huff of air against the fabric of his shirt. His arms tightened around you.

"The leatherworker will want to meet Moonfyre," he said, already planning, already thinking ahead to measurements and fittings and all the practical details that would make this real. "To take her dimensions. I will send word to him today."

"He will have to approach her slowly. She does not like strangers."

"I will tell him."

"And he cannot stare at her. She thinks staring is a challenge."

"I will tell him that too."

"And he should bring her something to eat. A goat, or a sheep. She likes people better when they come bearing food."

Valarr stopped in the doorway and turned to look at you, and there was something in his expression wonder, perhaps, or gratitude, or simply the overwhelming relief of a man who had been forgiven for something he could not forgive himself.

"I love you," he said. "You know that, don't you?"

You did. You had known it for longer than you had believed it, had felt it in every kiss and every gentle word and every moment when he looked at you as though you were the only real thing in a world made of shadows. But hearing him say it still made your heart stutter in your chest, still made you feel as though you were standing on the edge of something vast and terrifying and wonderful.

"I know," you said. "I love you too."

He kissed you once more, soft and brief and full of promise, and then he led you back up the stairs and into the light.

At the top of the stairs, instead of turning back toward the main corridor and the way you had come, he steered you left. Then right. Then through a narrow archway you had not noticed before, into a hallway lined with old tapestries whose threads had gone dull and grey with age.

"What is this?" you asked.

"The east gallery. It connects the residential wing to the great hall without going through the main courtyard. Useful when it rains."

"It is not raining."

"No," he agreed. "But you have never seen it, and I thought you might like to."

You walked a little further. He showed you the small sept tucked into an alcove off the gallery a quiet, shadowed space with carved dragons twining up the pillars and a septa's crystal catching the light from a single high window. He showed you the library, which was not grand like you imagined the one in King's Landing must be, but still held more books than you had ever seen in one place, their spines cracked and faded and smelling of dust and old paper. He showed you a narrow window that looked out over the eastern meadows where you and Moonfyre had first learned to fly, and he pointed to the distant smudge of the village and said, "Marta's roof needs new thatching. I noticed it yesterday. I'll send someone."

You looked at him. His profile was sharp against the window's light, his mismatched eyes fixed on the village below, and there was something deliberate in the way he spoke, something careful and measured that you could not quite name.

"Why are you being so thorough?" you asked.

He turned from the window. "Thorough?"

"All of this." You gestured at the corridor behind you, the library, the sept, the gallery with its faded tapestries. "You are showing me every corner of this castle as though you expect me to be tested on it later."

A smile tugged at the corner of his mouth, but it was a softer smile than before, less teasing and more tentative. "Perhaps I am."

"Valarr."

He exhaled, a long breath that seemed to carry some weight you could not see, and reached for your hand. His fingers intertwined with yours, warm and steady, and he lifted your joined hands and pressed a kiss to your knuckles before lowering them again.

"I am showing you your future home," he said. "Or one of them, at least. The Red Keep will be yours as well, when the time comes. I thought you ought to know your way around before—" He paused, his thumb tracing a slow circle over the back of your hand. "Before everything changes."

The word echoed in the quiet corridor. Home. You had a home. A small cottage with a sagging roof and a hearth that smoked when the wind blew from the east and a narrow pallet where Marta had tucked you in every night since you were small enough to be carried. That was home. That had always been home.

"Home," you repeated, and the word felt strange in your mouth, too large and too small at the same time.

"Yes. When you marry me, Dragonstone will be yours. Not just the caves and the village and the meadows, but all of it. The castle. The library. The sept and the gallery and every dusty corner you have not seen yet. And King's Landing, too, when—" He stopped, his jaw tightening briefly. "When the time comes."

Your heart was beating very fast. You could feel it in your throat, in your wrists, in the place where his thumb was still tracing circles over your skin.

"I do not recall accepting any proposal," you said.

It came out steadier than you felt. His eyes met yours, and there was no teasing in them now. Just him. Just Valarr, looking at you as though you were the only thing in the world worth looking at.

"You will," he said. "One day."

"That is very confident of you."

"Not confident. Hopeful." He lifted your hand again and pressed it flat against his chest, over his heart. You could feel it beating beneath your palm, quick and strong and slightly uneven. "I told you I would spend the rest of my life making up for the weeks I did not believe you. That was not a promise I made lightly. I do not expect you to forgive me tomorrow, or next moon, or even next year. I will wait. I will keep showing you libraries and septs and the best windows for watching the sunrise, and I will wait, and one day—when you are ready, when you have forgiven me as much as you are able—I will ask you properly. And you will say yes, or you will say no, and either way I will still be here. Still waiting. Still yours."

You stared at him. His heart was still hammering beneath your palm, belying the calm of his voice, and the silver streak in his hair caught the light from the window, and his eyes were full of something so raw and tender that it made your chest ache.

"You are a fool," you whispered.

"Probably."

"A complete and utter fool."

"I have been told."

You rose onto your toes and kissed him. It was not a gentle kiss, or a careful one. His words had been too earnest, too tender, too full of that quiet certainty that made your chest feel too small for everything inside it, and kissing him seemed the only way to make him stop before he said something else that made you want to weep in the middle of a dusty corridor. His free hand came up to cup your jaw, his fingers sliding into your hair, and he made a sound low in his throat and kissed you back.

The corridor was silent except for the soft sound of your mouths meeting and parting and meeting again, and for a long, suspended moment there was nothing in the world but his hand in your hair and his heart still hammering beneath your palm and the warmth of him pressed against you in the narrow space between the tapestries and the wall.

A throat cleared behind you. Not loudly. Politely, even. The kind of throat clearing that was meant to announce a presence without making a scene, the kind that belonged to someone who had walked in on something he ought not to have seen and was determined to pretend otherwise.

You pulled back from Valarr so quickly you nearly stumbled, your face flooding with heat. Valarr's hand fell from your jaw, but his other arm remained around your waist, steadying you, and when you looked up at him his expression was caught somewhere between mortification and the particular irritation of a man who had been interrupted at a crucial moment.

Prince Baelor stood at the end of the corridor, one hand resting lightly on the hilt of his sword, his expression impeccably neutral but he carried himself with the easy authority of a man who did not need a crown to be recognized. His dark beard was neatly trimmed, his jaw strong, and his eyes were fixed on a point just above your heads, as though the ceiling had suddenly become fascinating.

"Y/N," he said, and his voice was warm, warmer than you expected, as if he had not just witnessed his eldest son kissing a girl in a secluded corridor. "I did not expect to find you in the castle today. How fortunate."

Your face was still burning. You dropped into a curtsy—a little clumsily, your legs still unsteady from the kiss—and kept your eyes on the floor. "My prince. The fortune is mine."

Valarr's arm tightened around your waist, a small, reassuring pressure. "Father," he said, and his voice was even, though you could hear the strain beneath it. "I was just showing Y/N the castle. She has not seen much of it beyond the great hall and the tailor's chambers."

"So I observed," Baelor said, and there was the faintest hint of amusement in his tone, though his face remained carefully composed. He looked at you then, directly, and his expression softened. "Valarr tells me you agreed to riding clothes. I am glad. The dresses are charming, but I suspect they were not designed with dragonflight in mind."

You did not know what to say to that. Your hand found Valarr's sleeve and held on. "The tailor was very thorough, my prince."

"He is a tyrant in human form, but his work is excellent." Baelor smiled, and it transformed his face, made him look less like a prince and more like a man who told jokes and laughed at them. "Since you are here, you must stay for supper. I will not hear any argument—it is late, the sun will set soon, and there is no sense in walking all the way back to the village on an empty stomach. My wife has been asking to meet you properly. She will have my head if I let you slip away without an introduction."

Your stomach dropped. Supper. With the prince and princess of Dragonstone. In the great hall, or some private dining chamber, with servants and candles and more forks than you knew what to do with. You looked down at your dress, the dress of a village girl who spent her mornings mucking out goat pens and her afternoons scrubbing dragon scale from beneath her fingernails.

"My prince, I am not—" You stopped, swallowed, tried again. "I have nothing suitable to wear to a royal supper. And I would not wish to impose on your household without any warning, I am sure the kitchens have not prepared for an extra guest, and Marta will be expecting me back before dark, she worries when I am gone too long, and I should really—"

"Nonsense." Baelor waved his hand as though shooing away a fly. "Valarr, see that a bath is drawn for her in the guest quarters. Your mother has many gowns she will not mind if Y/N borrows one until the tailor finishes her commission. Send a servant to the village to inform Marta that Y/N will be dining at the castle tonight and will return in the morning."

"Father—" Valarr began, but Baelor was already turning, already walking back down the corridor with the unhurried stride of a man who was accustomed to having his instructions followed.

"This will be good," Baelor said over his shoulder, and his voice echoed slightly off the stone walls. "A proper family supper. It has been too long since we had one of those. I will inform the kitchens. Bring her to the dining chamber when she is ready."

He disappeared around the corner, his boots clicking against the stone, and then there was silence. You stood frozen, your hand still clutching Valarr's sleeve, your heart beating somewhere in the vicinity of your throat. A bath. A borrowed gown. Supper with the heir to the Iron Throne and his wife and his sons and—gods, how many forks were there going to be? You had eaten at Marta's table your whole life. You owned one spoon.

Valarr turned to you, and his expression was a complicated mixture of apology and barely suppressed amusement. "I am going to kill him," he said.

"Your father?"

"My father. Yes. That is the one I meant."

"He did not seem to notice the—" You gestured vaguely at the space between you, where moments ago there had been no space at all.

"Oh, he noticed." Valarr's mouth twitched. "He was looking at the ceiling. My father only looks at the ceiling when he is pretending he has not seen something. He did it when Matarys pushed me into the fountain during his nameday feast. He did it when my mother asked him if her new gown made her look fat. And he did it just now."

You closed your eyes. "I am going to die."

"You are not going to die."

"I am going to embarrass myself so thoroughly that I will wish I were dead. I do not know which fork to use. I do not know how to address a princess. I do not know—"

Valarr took your face in both his hands, gentle and steady, and pressed his lips to your forehead. "You will use whichever fork feels right. You will address my mother as 'my princess' and she will tell you to call her Jena, and you will not call her Jena because you are too polite, and she will like you all the more for it. My father already likes you. Matarys will talk so much that no one will notice if you use the wrong fork." He pulled back and looked at you, his pale eye catching the light. "And I will be beside you the entire time. You will not face any of it alone."

You wanted to argue. You wanted to point out that he was a prince and you were a bastard and that no amount of borrowed gowns would change the fact that you did not belong in a castle dining chamber with people who had been raised to rule. But he was looking at you with those eyes, and his hands were still warm on your face, and you could feel your protests crumbling before they reached your tongue.

"If I faint," you said, "you will have to carry me out."

"If you faint, I will carry you out and tell everyone you were overcome by the excellence of the roast lamb."

"That is not funny."

"It is a little funny."

You pushed his chest, but you were almost smiling, and he caught your hand and pressed a kiss to your palm before lacing his fingers through yours.

"The guest quarters are this way," he said. "The bath will take a little while to fill. In the meantime, I can show you the north tower—it has the best view of the Dragonmont, and there is a particular window where the light hits the stone in a way that makes it look like fire. If you want."

You took a breath. Let it out. Squeezed his hand.

"Show me," you said.

He led you through corridors you had never seen before, the guest quarters, when you reached them, were not as grand as you had feared. The chamber was small but warm, a fire already crackling in the hearth, a canopied bed pushed against one wall with hangings the color of heather. Servants were already moving in and out, carrying copper tubs of steaming water, laying out cloths and jars and things you did not recognize.

Valarr spoke to them in low tones, giving instructions you could not quite hear, and then turned back to you. His hand found yours and squeezed once, briefly.

"The bath will be ready soon," he said. "I will leave you to it."

"You are not staying?" The words came out before you could stop them, sharper than you intended, edged with something that sounded uncomfortably like panic.

Valarr paused. A smile tugged at the corner of his mouth, not the polite smile he wore in public, but the smaller, more private one that meant he was trying not to laugh at you.

"It would be somewhat improper," he said, "for me to stay while you bathe. Unless you are insisting. In which case I suppose I could be persuaded."

Your face went hot. You could feel the blush spreading from your cheeks to your ears to the base of your throat, and you were suddenly very interested in the pattern of the rug beneath your feet. "I did not mean it like that."

"I know." He stepped closer and pressed a kiss to your forehead, his lips warm and brief against your skin. "I was teasing you. The servants know what they are doing—all you have to do is stand there and let yourself be treated like a doll for an hour or so. Can you manage that?"

"I have never been treated like a doll in my life."

"Then it is long overdue." He pulled back and looked at you, his mismatched eyes soft. "Trust them. I will be back before you know it."

And then he was gone, the door clicking shut behind him, and you were alone with the servants and the steam and the copper tubs and the frightening array of jars and bottles and strange instruments laid out on a side table.

What followed was one of the most mortifying hours of your life.

The servants were efficient and utterly unbothered by your nakedness in a way that only made your nakedness feel more acute. You had bathed yourself your whole life this was nothing like that. This was hands in your hair and warm water poured over your shoulders and something that smelled of lavender massaged into your scalp. This was a rough stone, a pumice stone, one of the women called it, though you had never heard the word, dragged carefully over your elbows and knees and the soles of your feet, scraping away calluses you had earned over years of climbing and kneeling and walking barefoot through the village. This was oil rubbed into your skin until you gleamed like polished wood, and then more oil, a different kind, something that smelled of jasmine and made your skin feel impossibly soft.

They cut your hair. Not much—just the ends, just enough to make it fall evenly down your back instead of straggling in uneven lengths the way it always had. You watched the pale strands drift to the floor and felt a strange pang in your chest, as though they were cutting away some essential part of who you were.

Then came the dress. You had expected something simple. Something modest, in a muted color, appropriate for a village girl who had been invited to supper out of politeness rather than any real desire for her company. What the servants lifted from the wardrobe was not simple.

The gown was lilac a pale, shimmering shade that seemed to shift between purple and silver as it caught the light. The neckline dipped low across the chest, lower than anything you had ever worn, and when you looked down at yourself after it was laced you saw your own body as though for the first time. The cut of the bodice lifted and shaped in ways you had not known were possible. The waist was tight, the sleeves long and fitted, and silver embroidery traced delicate patterns across the whole of it, flowers, you thought, or perhaps vines. The skirts fell in soft folds to the floor, and when you moved they whispered against the stone like a secret.

The girl in the mirror was a stranger. She was beautiful. You could admit that, even if it felt like admitting something shameful. Her skin glowed, soft and luminous from the oils and the pumice and the careful attention of hands that knew how to transform a body into something ornamental. Her collarbones were visible above the neckline, her waist impossibly narrow, her hands usually chapped and reddened from work resting soft and pale against the lilac silk. She looked like a princess. She looked like she belonged in this castle, in this chamber, in this gown. She looked like someone who had never mucked out a goat pen or scrubbed dragon scale from beneath her fingernails or woken before dawn to haul water from the well.

She looked nothing like you. This was what they did, you thought. This was what nobles did every day of their lives. They stood in warm chambers while servants oiled and polished and dressed them, while hands they did not have to thank transformed them into something beautiful enough to be looked at. They wore silk while you had worn patched wool. They ate from silver plates while you had eaten from wooden bowls. They had never once wondered if they belonged at the table because they had never once sat anywhere else.

And here you were, dressed like one of them, looking like one of them, as though a lilac gown and some jasmine oil could erase everything you were and everything you came from.

The door opened behind you. You did not turn. You were still staring at the stranger in the mirror, your hands clenched at your sides, your heart beating too hard against the boning of the borrowed bodice. Footsteps. Then silence. Then Valarr's voice, low and rough and stripped of all composure.

"Gods be good."

You turned. He was standing in the doorway, one hand still on the latch, his cloak gone and his dark hair slightly damp as though he had bathed and dressed in haste. He was wearing a deep blue tunic you had not seen before, silver thread at the collar and cuffs, and his mismatched eyes were wide. His lips were parted. He looked at you the way you had seen villagers look at moonfyre as though something impossible and beautiful was happening in front of him and he did not know whether to speak or kneel or simply stand there and let it burn itself into his memory.

"You look," he said, and stopped. Swallowed. Started again. "You look like the Maiden herself. Reborn. Walking the earth. In my father's guest quarters."

"That is blasphemy," you said, because you did not know what else to say.

"Then I will do penance tomorrow." He crossed the room in three strides and stopped just short of touching you, his hands hovering at your elbows as though he was afraid the gown might dissolve if he made contact. Up close, you could see the faint flush rising along his jaw, the way his throat moved as he swallowed again. "I mean it. You are—I do not have the words. I have read poetry. I have read a great deal of poetry. None of it is adequate."

Your cheeks were warming again, but the resentment was still there, coiled beneath the fluster. "It is the dress. And the oils, and the—the stones, and my hair, and—"

"It is you." His hands found your elbows at last, gentle and steady. "It is you in the dress. It is you with your hair like moonlight and your eyes doing that thing where you are not certain whether to be pleased or to run. It is you, Y/N. The rest is just trimming."

"I do not look like myself," you said quietly.

"No," he agreed. "You look like the person you have always been, only now the outside matches the inside. That is what fine clothes are supposed to do, I think. I have never understood it until now."

You did not know what to say to that. You were not certain there was anything to say. So you stood there, in your borrowed lilac gown, with his hands warm on your elbows and his eyes full of something that looked a great deal like worship, and you let yourself be looked at.

He was still holding your elbows, his thumbs tracing small arcs over the silk, when his expression shifted. The wonder in his face dimmed slightly, replaced by something more careful, more searching.

"You are uncomfortable," he said. "If the dress bothers you, I will find you another. There are a dozen gowns in the wardrobes here—my mother's, my cousins', ones that have been left behind by visiting ladies over the years. Something with a higher neckline, or heavier fabric, or—"

"No." The word came out faster than you intended. You shook your head, your hands smoothing over the lilac skirts almost without your permission. "No, it is not the dress. The dress is…" You struggled for the right word, and failed, and settled for the truth instead. "It is the most beautiful thing I have ever worn. I have never worn anything like it. When I was small, I used to dream about dresses like this."

You had not meant to say that. The confession slipped out before you could catch it, and once it was free you could not pull it back. You remembered those dreams now, sharp and sudden, lying on your pallet in Marta's cottage while the fire burned low, imagining yourself in gowns of silver and gold and deep Targaryen red, imagining a life where you walked into a room and people looked at you not with pity or curiosity but with respect. You had always woken from those dreams feeling foolish. A bastard girl with patched wool and callused hands, dreaming of silk. It was like a goat dreaming of flying.

Valarr's hands tightened on your elbows. "And now you are wearing one."

"Now I am wearing one," you agreed. "And I feel like I have stolen something. Like I walked into a room I was not supposed to enter and put on a gown that belongs to someone else and at any moment someone is going to realize the mistake and send me back where I came from." Your voice was steady, but only just. "I feel like I do not deserve this."

"Y/N—"

"I know what you are going to say."

"You do not," he said quietly, "because what I am going to say is that you deserve this more than anyone I have ever met."

You looked at him. His face was earnest and open and so desperately sincere that it made your chest hurt. And beneath that sincerity, beneath the warmth and the love and the way he was looking at you as though you were the answer to some question he had been asking his whole life, something else stirred. A thought. A question. A splinter of doubt that you could not quite dislodge.

Why?

Why did you deserve it more than anyone? Why did any of this, the dress, the oils, the servants, the castle, the prince who looked at you like you were the Maiden reborn, why did any of it have to be deserved at all? Marta had worked her whole life, her hands gnarled and aching, her back bent over poultices and potions and the bodies of the sick and the dying, and she had never once worn silk. The fishermen who went out before dawn in their leaking boats, the baker's wife who rose at an hour that ought not to exist to knead dough for bread she would never have time to eat warm, the village children who ran barefoot through the mud because shoes cost coin and coin was for food—why did none of them deserve pretty dresses? Why did decency have to be earned? Why was beauty a reward for the few instead of a gift for everyone?

You did not say any of this. You were not certain you knew how to shape the words, or whether Valarr would understand them if you did. He had been raised in a world where some people deserved things and others did not, and he was kind but kindness and understanding were not the same thing.

"Y/N." His voice pulled you back. He was watching you carefully, his head tilted slightly, his pale eye narrowed. "You went somewhere just now. Where did you go?"

"Nowhere." You shook your head and forced a smile. "I am here."

"You are lying. But I will not press you." He lifted one hand from your elbow and offered it to you, palm up. "Come. I told you I would show you how the soup is supposed to go, and I meant it. Father will have told the kitchens to prepare something elaborate—he always does when there are guests—but I can at least warn you which course comes with which implement and when you are supposed to nod politely instead of speaking."

You stared at his outstretched hand. A prince's hand, clean and uncallused, offered to a girl whose palms still bore the faint roughness of work despite the pumice stone's best efforts.

"I am a little scared," you admitted. The words came out small, smaller than you wanted them to.

"I know." His hand did not waver. "You do not have to pretend you are not. I will be beside you the entire time. And if anyone makes you feel unwelcome, I will—"

"What? Challenge them to a duel?"

"I was going to say I would glare at them meaningfully. But a duel is also an option."

Despite everythin you laughed. It was a small laugh, barely more than a breath, but it was real. Valarr smiled, and his hand was still there, waiting.

"Alright," you said, and placed your palm in his. "Show me."

He led you not to the dining chamber to a small room just off the corridor, one you had not seen during his earlier tour. It was not grand. A modest table, two chairs, a sideboard bearing a modest collection of plates and bowls and an array of cutlery that seemed excessive for a room this size. A single window looked out over the darkening sea, the sky going violet at the edges where the sun had begun its slow descent.

"A practice round," Valarr said, pulling out one of the chairs and gesturing for you to sit. "Before the real battle. Every knight drills before a tourney."

You sat. The lilac skirts pooled around you on the chair, and you spent a moment arranging them so you would not trip if you had to stand suddenly. "Is supper a tourney now?"

"Supper with my family can be a trial by combat if you are not prepared. Fortunately, the rules of etiquette are simpler than swordplay. There are only six forks to worry about instead of seven, for instance, and no one is trying to unhorse you."

"Six forks," you repeated, your voice flat.

"Only five, actually. I was exaggerating for dramatic effect. There are three." He pulled the other chair close to yours—close enough that your knees nearly touched—and sat down, reaching for a spoon from the sideboard. "This is the soup spoon. You will know the soup course has arrived because someone will place a bowl of soup in front of you. At that point, you may use this spoon. You dip it away from yourself—so—and you sip from the side, not the front. Like this."

He demonstrated with an imaginary bowl, his movements exaggerated and faintly ridiculous, and you felt some of the tension in your shoulders ease.

"Away from myself," you said. "Side of the spoon. Not the front."

"Exactly. You are already better than Matarys, who once drank his soup directly from the bowl during a formal banquet because he was thirteen and wanted to see what would happen. What happened was that our mother did not speak to him for two days."

You laughed despite yourself. Valarr's eyes crinkled at the corners, pleased.

"The fish fork," he continued, picking up a smaller implement with slightly curved tines, "is for fish. The meat fork is for meat. If you are ever uncertain which to use, watch me. I will use the correct one, and you can follow half a heartbeat behind. No one will notice."

"They will notice."

"They will be looking at Moonfyre's rider. They will be looking at the girl who brought dragons back to House Targaryen. They will not be looking at which fork you are holding. And if they do, they are boors, and their opinion is not worth your concern."

You picked up the fish fork and turned it over in your fingers. It was heavier than it looked, the silver cool against your skin. "You make it sound simple."

"It is simple. You are the one making it complicated."

"I am not—" You stopped, because he was looking at you with that particular expression he wore when he knew he was right and was waiting for you to admit it. "Perhaps I am making it a little complicated."

"Only a little." He reached over and gently extracted the fork from your fingers, setting it back on the sideboard. His hand lingered on yours. "You are also gripping that fork as though you expect it to attempt an escape. Try to hold it more like a writing quill and less like a weapon."

"I have never held a writing quill."

"Then hold it like you hold my hand. Gently. As though you trust it."

Your eyes met his. The room was quiet except for the distant crash of waves against the cliffs, the soft crackle of the torch in its sconce. His thumb traced a slow line across your knuckles.

"You are flirting with me," you said.

"I am always flirting with you. It is one of my defining characteristics." He lifted your hand and pressed a kiss to the center of your palm. "Is it working?"

"A little."

"Only a little. I shall have to try harder." He released your hand and reached for a small plate, holding it up between you like a shield. "Bread. You will tear it with your fingers, not cut it with a knife. Tearing bread with a knife is considered uncouth, though I have never understood why. Bread does not care how it is divided."

"Bread does not care about anything. It is bread."

"Precisely my point. And yet the rules persist." He set the plate down and leaned back in his chair, his knee brushing against yours beneath the table. "You are still nervous."

"I am always nervous."

"I know. But this is a different kind of nervous. You are thinking about forks and soup spoons and whether my mother will like you, and you are forgetting that you have already done something braver than any of them have ever done."

You looked down at your hands, at the faint calluses the pumice stone had not quite managed to erase. "I do not feel brave."

"Bravery is not a feeling. It is an action. You saved a dragon. You flew across the sea. You came back." He tilted his head, catching your gaze and holding it. "What is a soup spoon compared to that?"

"A soup spoon is smaller."

"Much smaller. And less likely to bite you."

"Moonfyre tried biting me once."

"And you survived. You will survive the soup course as well." He smiled, and it was the private smile, the one that crinkled the corners of his mismatched eyes and made him look less like a prince and more like the boy who had sat beside you in a meadow and taught you to read. "If you become overwhelmed during supper, I have a plan."

"What plan?"

"I will feed you."

You stared at him. "You will what?"

"Feed you. Lift morsels to your lips with my own fork. It will be very romantic and deeply inappropriate for a formal dinner, and my father will stare at the ceiling again and you will be so distracted by your embarrassment that you will forget to be nervous about the cutlery."

Your face was hot. "That is the worst plan I have ever heard."

"It is an excellent plan. I have been refining it for hours."

"You have not."

"You are correct, I invented it just now. But I am committed to it. Say the word and I will feed you every course from soup to sweetcake."

"Please do not feed me at your father's table."

He sighed with theatrical regret. "Very well. But the offer remains open. If you find yourself paralyzed by the weight of silverware, simply look at me. I will know what it means."

"You will know what what means? I do not even know what it means."

"I will know." He stood and offered you his hand, the same gesture he had made in the guest quarters, patient and steady and sure. "Are you ready? The soup is waiting, and I have it on good authority that it is leek and potato. My father is very fond of leek and potato. He will talk about it at length. You need only nod and make appreciative sounds."

You took his hand and rose, the lilac skirts settling around you with a whisper. "Appreciative sounds I can manage."

"I never doubted you for a moment." He tucked your hand into the crook of his elbow and led you toward the door. Just before you reached it, he paused and leaned close, his breath warm against your ear. "You are the most beautiful woman I have ever seen. You are the rider of the first dragon in seventy years. You are stronger than anyone in that dining chamber, and kinder, and braver. The forks are irrelevant. The soup is irrelevant. You could eat with your hands and my mother would still adore you."

"She would not."

"She would. She told me so."

You did not trust yourself to speak. So you tightened your hand on his arm and let him lead you into the corridor, toward the dining chamber and the soup and whatever lay beyond.

The small dining chamber was not what you had expected. You had imagined something vast and echoing but this room was intimate, almost cozy, its walls hung with tapestries in warm shades of gold and russet, its hearth fire casting dancing shadows across a table set for five. Candles flickered in iron holders. The smell of roasted meat and fresh bread drifted from somewhere nearby. It was, you realized with a jolt, a room meant for family.

The family was already there. Baelor stood near the hearth, a goblet in his hand, his dark beard catching the firelight as he turned toward the door. He smiled when he saw you and inclined his head in greeting. Beside him, a woman had risen from her chair.

She was not tall. That was the first thing you noticed. Princess Jena Dondarrion was small and fine boned, with hair the color of autumn leaves and eyes the pale, clear blue of a winter sky. She was not beautiful in the way the songs described princesses. Her face was too sharp for that, her nose slightly aquiline, her mouth set in a line that suggested she spent more time thinking than smiling. But there was something striking about her nonetheless, a quiet intensity, a sense of coiled intelligence behind those pale eyes.

The young man sprawled in the chair beside her could only be Matarys. He had his mother's coloring, though on him the hair curled wildly around his ears and the eyes held a restless, mischievous gleam. He was handsome, you supposed, in a way that was less polished than Valarr's careful composure. Where Valarr was stillness and duty, Matarys seemed to be barely contained motion, his fingers drumming against the arm of his chair, his leg bouncing beneath the table. He was watching you with undisguised curiosity, and when your eyes met his, he grinned.

You dropped into a curtsy before you could lose your nerve, gripping the sides of your borrowed skirts the way Valarr had shown you in the practice room. "My prince's. My princess. I am honored to be received."

The words felt stiff in your mouth, rehearsed and foreign, but Jena's expression softened slightly at the edges, and Baelor raised his goblet in a small toast. "The honor is ours," he said. "Please, sit. You are not a petitioner tonight, Y/N. You are a guest."

Valarr's hand found the small of your back, a brief, steadying pressure, and he guided you to the chair beside his. The table was round, not long, and you found yourself seated between Valarr and Matarys, directly across from Jena. Baelor took the chair beside his wife, setting down his goblet with a soft clunk.

Servants appeared as if conjured, pouring wine into your goblet—a pale gold, not the deep red you had expected—and setting down bowls of soup. Leek and potato, just as Valarr had predicted. Steam curled upward, fragrant and warm.

"So," Matarys said, before anyone else could speak. "You are the dragon girl."

"Matarys," Jena said, her voice quiet but carrying a warning.

"What? I am only stating a fact. She is a girl, and she has a dragon. That makes her the dragon girl." He leaned forward, his blue eyes bright with curiosity. "Is it true she sleeps curled around you like a cat? Valarr said she sleeps curled around you like a cat."

"Matarys," Valarr said, in a tone that was considerably less patient than his mother's.

"I am only asking what everyone is thinking. You cannot blame me for being curious. There has not been a living dragon in seventy years, and now one is napping not half a league from where I sleep, and I am not allowed to see her." He turned to you, his expression plaintive. "Do you know what that is like? It is like being told there is a feast in the next room but you are not permitted to leave your chair."

You picked up your soup spoon, remembering Valarr's instructions. Away from yourself. Sip from the side. The soup was hot and creamy and rich in a way that village soup never was real cream, you thought, and butter, and herbs you could not name.

"Moonfyre does not curl around me like a cat," you said, after you had swallowed. "She is much larger than a cat."

"But she does curl around you?"

"Sometimes. When she is cold."

Matarys looked at Valarr with an expression of profound vindication. "She does curl around her like a cat."

"I never said she did not," Valarr muttered into his soup.

Baelor chuckled, a low, warm sound. "Let the girl eat, Matarys. You can interrogate her after the fish course."

The conversation eased after that, settling into something that felt almost natural. Jena asked you about the village how long you had lived there, whether the fishing had been good this season, if the storms had damaged any of the cottages. Her questions were practical, straightforward, the questions of a woman who had learned to manage a household and was genuinely interested in how other people managed theirs. You answered as best you could, and when you stumbled over a word or forgot to address her as "my princess," she did not correct you. She only nodded and asked another question.

Baelor asked about Marta, how long she had been a healer, what remedies she used for winter fever, whether she had ever trained with a maester. You told him she had learned from her mother and her mother before her, that she knew every herb on Dragonstone and what it cured, that she had never lost a mother in childbirth. Baelor listened with genuine interest, his eyes thoughtful, and when you finished he said, "She sounds like a remarkable woman. I should like to meet her properly one day."

The fish course came and went. You used the fish fork without incident, though you caught Valarr watching you with a small, private smile when you picked it up. His knee pressed against yours beneath the table, a warm point of contact that anchored you when your nerves began to fray.

It was Baelor who raised the question you had been dreading. "Y/N," he said, setting down his knife, his voice gentle but curious. "You have the look of our house, it is unmistakable. Have you any idea who your Targaryen parent might have been?"

The table went quiet. Not the awkward quiet of people who were embarrassed for you, but the attentive quiet of people who were genuinely interested. Even Matarys stopped fidgeting. You took a sip of wine to buy yourself a moment. The goblet was cool against your fingers.

"No, my prince," you said. "I was found abandoned. Marta took me in when I was only a few days old, or so she says. There was nothing with me—no note, no token, no clue to who my parents might have been. I do not even know if it was my mother or my father who had the Targaryen blood."

Jena exchanged a glance with Baelor, something unreadable passing between them. "That is a hard beginning," she said quietly.

"It was not so hard. Marta was good to me. I had food and a roof and someone who loved me." You paused, your thumb tracing the rim of your goblet. "I have wondered, of course. Every child wonders. But after a while, I stopped. It did not matter who my parents were. What mattered was who I was."

Valarr's hand found yours beneath the table, his fingers lacing through yours and squeezing once.

"That is a wise perspective," Baelor said. "Wiser than many who have had easier beginnings." He did not press further, and you were grateful.

The conversation shifted, turning toward lighter things, the upcoming harvest festival in the village, the quality of the wine from the Arbor, a horse that Matarys had tried to ride and been thrown from. Matarys told this story with great enthusiasm, describing his ignominious fall into a mud puddle with the kind of dramatic detail that made even Jena's stern mouth twitch toward a smile.

Then he turned to you, his blue eyes bright with renewed curiosity.

"Valarr told us something else about you," he said, and something in his tone made you wary. "He said you admire the late Princess Baela. The rider of Moondancer."

You blinked. "He told you that?"

"He tells me many things. I am his favorite brother."

"I am his only brother," Matarys said, unperturbed. "But yes. He said you are fascinated with her. That you named your dragon after hers. Moonfyre, Moondancer. It is a tribute, is it not?"

You glanced at Valarr. He was looking at his plate, his jaw slightly tight, as though he had not expected Matarys to bring this up at supper and was already regretting ever telling him anything.

"It is," you said, turning back to Matarys. "Marta used to tell me the old stories when I was small. The Dance of the Dragons, the conquest, all of it. But I always liked Baela best. She was not the heir or the queen or the one the songs were written about. She was just—brave. Fierce. Loyal to the people she loved. She rode Moondancer against Sunfyre even though she knew she would lose. She did it anyway."

"That is why you like her? Because she lost?"

"Because she fought." You had not meant to say it so forcefully, but the words came out steady and sure. "Because she did not wait for someone else to save her. Because she made her own choices and she stood by them, even when they cost her everything, reading it myself with Valarr's help only made me adore her even more."

"Valarr taught you to read," Baelor said, breaking the silence. It was not quite a question.

"Yes, my prince. He has been lending me books from the castle library. Histories, mostly. Some legends."

"That is impressive," Baelor said, and he sounded as though he meant it. "To learn so quickly, and to read well enough to tackle the histories. You have a sharp mind, Y/N."

You felt heat rise to your cheeks. "I had a good teacher." Valarr's hand tightened on yours beneath the table.

"Valarr is many things," Jena said, her voice dry, "but patient is not usually among them. He must have made an exception for you."

"I am very patient," Valarr said, with a touch of indignation.

"You once threw a book at your septa because she corrected your High Valyrian pronunciation."

"I was eight."

"And you missed. Your aim has never been good."

Matarys let out a bark of laughter. Baelor hid a smile behind his goblet. Valarr looked at his mother with an expression of profound betrayal, and you found yourself laughing too, a real laugh, startled out of you before you could stifle it.

Jena's pale blue eyes shifted to you, and her expression was no longer unreadable. She was smiling, a small, private smile that softened the sharp lines of her face and made her look almost warm.

"I am glad to finally meet you," she said. "Truly. I have wondered what kind of girl could make my son sleep in a peasant's cottage."

"Mother—" Valarr began, but Jena continued as though he had not spoken.

"Do you know, when he was a child, he used to follow his father on hunting trips. He insisted he wanted to be a knight, wanted to learn woodcraft and survival and all the things a future king ought to know. And then he would come back after three days in the forest and cry to me because the bedroll was lumpy and the ground was cold and his tent had leaked in the rain." She took a sip of her wine, her eyes never leaving your face. "He was a fastidious child. Very particular about his pillows. I had to have special ones made for him—goose down, with silk covers, because the wool ones gave him a rash."

"Mother," Valarr said, and his voice was pained.

"And yet now he sleeps every night on a straw pallet in a village cottage, with a roof that leaks and a hearth that smokes and an old woman who apparently throws slippers at his head." Jena set down her goblet. "He has not complained once. Not a single letter home lamenting the accommodations. So you must be something quite extraordinary."

You did not know where to look. Your face was burning, and Valarr's hand had gone rigid in yours, and Matarys was grinning like a fool.

"I do not think it is me," you managed. "Marta's cottage is very comfortable. The straw is fresh, and she keeps the hearth clean, and—"

"And you are there," Jena said simply. "That is the difference. He would sleep on a stone floor if you were beside him."

"Mother," Valarr said again, and this time his voice cracked slightly.

Jena smiled at him—a real smile, full of affection and amusement and something gentler beneath. "I am not mocking you, my son. I am glad. It is good to see you sleep somewhere willingly. You were always a restless child. You used to wake in the night and crawl into our bed because you had dreamed of dragons."

The word hung in the air for a moment. Matarys opened his mouth, probably to make some joke, but Jena silenced him with a single look.

"I am glad you found your dragon," she said to Valarr, and then her pale eyes shifted back to you. "And I am glad you found her."

You did not know what to say to that. You were not certain there was anything adequate. So you simply met her eyes and said, "Thank you, my princess. I am glad too." Beneath the table, Valarr's hand turned in yours, his palm warm and steady.

The meat course arrived a tender cut of lamb, pink at the center, dressed with rosemary and garlic and some kind of dark wine reduction that you did not know the name for. You used the meat fork. Valarr's knee remained pressed against yours beneath the table, steady as a heartbeat.

It was Baelor who brought the subject around, setting down his knife with a soft clink and folding his hands on the table before him. His expression was thoughtful, the same expression he had worn in the corridor when he told you to stay for supper, warm, but measured. A prince making a decision.

"I wrote to my father," he said. "The King. I told him about Moonfyre."

Your hand stilled on your fork. The lamb was suddenly very difficult to swallow. King Daeron the man whose word was law, whose temper you had never seen, whose opinion could change everything. You had known this moment would come. You had known, in some way, that the King would have to be told. But knowing and hearing it spoken aloud at a family supper were two very different things.

"What did he say?" Matarys asked, leaning forward with undisguised eagerness. "Did he believe you? Is he coming here? Does he want to see the dragon?"

Baelor held up a hand, silencing his younger son with the gesture. "He did not believe me."

The silence that followed was not shocked. It was confused, uncertain, the silence of people who had been expecting one answer and received another entirely.

"What do you mean, he did not believe you?" Valarr's voice was careful, but there was an edge to it. "You wrote to him yourself. In your own hand. With your own seal."

"I did. And he read the letter, and he concluded that it was not from me at all." Baelor's mouth twitched. "He thought Matarys had written it. As a joke."

Matarys blinked. Then his face broke into a grin of such pure, delighted mischief that he looked about twelve years old. "He thought I wrote it?"

“He complimented the attention to detail.”

You pressed your napkin to your mouth, but it was too late. A laugh had already risen in your throat, sharp and sudden and entirely inappropriate for a formal supper with the royal family. You tried to swallow it. You failed. It came out as a strangled sort of cough, and then another, and then you had to take a long drink of wine to keep from laughing outright.

Valarr looked at you with concern. "Are you alright?"

"Fine," you managed, your voice slightly strangled. "Perfectly fine. I was only thinking—" You set down your goblet and met Baelor's eyes. You could feel the corners of your mouth twitching. "He did not believe you."

"No."

Baelor's dark eyes were steady on yours, and there was something in them, recognition, perhaps, or wry amusement, or the shared understanding of two people who had learned the same lesson in very different ways. "That is precisely what he decided."

You took a breath and folded your hands in your lap, composing yourself with an effort that felt almost physical. "I cannot imagine," you said, very carefully, "how that would feel. Truly. To tell someone the truth, something you have seen with your own eyes, something you know to be real—and to have them smile and nod and think you are making it up. To have them be so certain they know better that they dismiss you without even bothering to investigate." You met Baelor's gaze and held it. "I cannot imagine that at all."

Baelor looked at you for a long moment. Then he let out a breath that was not quite a laugh, not quite a sigh, and lifted his goblet.

"Well played," he said quietly.

Jena was watching you with those pale blue eyes, her expression unreadable but not unkind. Matarys was looking between his father and you with the air of someone who had just watched a very entertaining joust and was not quite sure who had won. Valarr's hand found yours beneath the table again, and when you glanced at him, his mismatched eyes were bright with something that looked a great deal like amusement.

"He will believe you eventually," you said to Baelor, your voice softer now. "When he sees Moonfyre for himself. When she is standing in front of him, real and solid and breathing fire. He will have to believe you then."

"Yes," Baelor said. "He will. And when that day comes, I intend to remind him of this letter. Frequently. In great detail." He paused, and a smile tugged at the corner of his mouth—the same smile you had seen on Valarr a hundred times, rueful and self deprecating and entirely genuine. "I suspect you may understand something of that impulse as well."

"I might," you said. "A little."

—

The guest chamber was too quiet. You had been lying in the dark for what felt like hours, the canopy above you a deeper shade of shadow against the ceiling, the fire burned down to embers that pulsed faintly in the hearth like a heartbeat made of light. The bed was soft, softer than anything you had ever slept on, goose down and fine linen and pillows that smelled of lavender. It should have been wonderful. It should have been the most comfortable night of your life.

You could not sleep. Your body was exhausted, heavy with the weight of the evening, the soup and the fish and the lamb, the wine and the candles and the way Jena had looked at you when she said I am glad you found her. But your mind would not stop turning. It circled the same thoughts over and over, a crow picking at old bones. King Daeron did not believe Baelor. The King thought the letter was a joke. The King would have to be convinced, would have to see Moonfyre with his own eyes, and what if he believed and was afraid, or what if he believed and wanted to take her—

A knock at the door. Soft, hesitant, barely audible over the distant crash of the waves. You sat up, your heart lurching. "Who is there?"

"Only me." Valarr's voice, muffled through the wood. "I saw the light beneath your door. You are not sleeping."

"I am sleeping. This is a dream. You are speaking to a sleeping person."

"May I come in? Or shall I continue this conversation with the door?"

You hesitated. It was late, very late, the hour when respectable girls were asleep in their beds and respectable princes were asleep in theirs. But you were not a respectable girl, not really, and Valarr had never been a particularly respectable prince. He had slept beside you in Marta's cottage for nights now, his arm around your waist, his breath warm against your hair. The servants would talk. The servants were probably already talking. What was one more transgression?

"Come in," you said. The door opened just wide enough for him to slip through, and then it clicked shut behind him. He was dressed for sleep a loose tunic, soft breeches, his feet bare against the stone floor. His dark hair was rumpled, the silver streak catching the firelight, and his mismatched eyes found you in the darkness without difficulty.

"You could not sleep either," you said.

"Your chamber is next mine. I could hear you thinking."

"That is impossible."

"Nevertheless." He crossed the room and stood beside the bed, looking down at you with an expression that was half affection and half exhaustion. "Would you like some company? I find that thinking is easier to bear when there is someone else to share the weight of it."

You did not answer with words. You only shifted over, making room, and pulled back the edge of the blanket in invitation. He climbed in beside you with the practiced ease of someone who had done this many times before. The mattress dipped beneath his weight, and then his arm was around your waist and your head was tucked against his shoulder and the lavender-scented pillows were forgotten because there was nothing in the world that smelled quite like him salt and leather and something warm and clean that you had come to associate with safety.

For a long moment, neither of you spoke. The fire crackled softly. The waves crashed against the cliffs below. His hand traced slow, idle patterns on your back through the thin fabric of your borrowed nightgown.

"Do you like it here?" he asked quietly. "Staying in the castle, I mean. Is it comfortable?" You considered the question. The bed was comfortable. The bath had been mortifying but the results were undeniable. The food was richer than anything you had ever eaten. The chamber was warm and dry and did not smell of goat or herbs or the particular mustiness that crept into Marta's cottage when it rained.

"It is comfortable," you said. "Very comfortable."

"And Moonfyre would be comfortable here too."

You tilted your head back to look at him. His profile was sharp against the firelight, his pale eye gleaming, his mouth set in the careful line of someone who was trying very hard to sound casual and not quite succeeding.

"What do you mean?"

"The castle and the caves are one and the same," he said. "The Dragonmont runs beneath Dragonstone like a web of veins. You have seen the eastern tunnels—they connect to the castle cellars, to the old hatcheries, to chambers that were built for the express purpose of housing dragons. If Moonfyre lived here, she would have a proper resting place. Warm stone. Hot springs. Room to grow. She would not have to sleep in a cave that is also a thoroughfare for goats and curious village children."

"Moonfyre likes the cave."

"I am not saying she does not. But she has grown, Y/N. She is larger than she was when you found her, and she will keep growing. The cave will not fit her forever. And—" He hesitated, his hand stilling on your back. "And she has knocked things over. In the village."

You winced. That was true. Moonfyre had knocked things over. The baker's fence, for one, when she had decided she wanted to follow you into the village and her tail had swung a little too wide. Old Tom's drying rack, which had been laden with salted fish and had gone crashing to the ground in a shower of scales and splinters. No one had been hurt, but people had screamed. People had run. People had grabbed their children and looked at your dragon with terror in their eyes, and Moonfyre had hissed at them because she did not understand why they were screaming, and you had spent an hour calming her down and another hour apologizing to everyone in the village and another hour after that sitting in Marta's cottage with your head in your hands.

"The villagers are afraid of her," you said quietly.

"Some of them. Not all. But enough." His hand resumed its slow pattern on your back. "It is not their fault. They have never seen a dragon before. They do not know her the way you do. They see teeth and claws and fire, and they are afraid, and fear makes people do foolish things. I do not want anyone to do something foolish and force Moonfyre to defend herself."

You closed your eyes. The image was too easy to summon, a frightened villager with a pitchfork, a dragon who did not understand the threat, fire where there should not be fire. "Neither do I."

"Dragonstone is called Dragonstone for a reason," Valarr said, and his voice was gentle but insistent, the voice of someone who had been thinking about this for a long time and had finally found the courage to speak. "It is the seat of dragonlords. It was built by my ancestors for this exact purpose—to house dragons and their riders, to be a place where both could thrive. The old hatcheries are still warm. The Dragonmont is full of caves and tunnels and chambers that have not been used in seventy years but are still there, still waiting. Moonfyre could have the run of them. She could fly from the mountain and return to the mountain, and no one would scream or run or grab a pitchfork. She would be safe here. You would both be safe here."

You were quiet. His words settled into the space between you, heavy and warm and impossible to ignore.

"I do not want to leave Marta alone," you said finally. The words came out smaller than you intended.

Valarr's arm tightened around you. "You would not have to."

"She would never agree to leave the village. That cottage is her home. She has lived there since before I was born—before she found me. She knows every creak in the floorboards and every crack in the hearth and exactly where the roof leaks when the wind blows from the east. She would never leave it."

"Then we will not ask her to leave it." He shifted, propping himself up on one elbow so he could look down at you. The firelight caught the silver streak in his hair, turned it to molten moonlight. "I will take care of her. Servants to fetch her water so she does not have to haul it from the well. Guards to keep her safe. A girl to help with her herbs and her remedies and whatever else she needs. She will be treated like a lady of the castle, even if she chooses to stay in her cottage. She raised you. She kept you safe when no one else would. The least I can do is make sure she never has to work herself to the bone again."

Your throat was tight. "She will throw a slipper at the servants. She does not like people fussing over her."

"Then the servants will learn to duck." He reached down and brushed a strand of hair from your face, his fingers lingering against your temple. "You are not choosing between Marta and the castle, Y/N. You are not abandoning her. You are simply moving a little further up the mountain. She can visit whenever she likes. You can visit whenever you like. The distance is not so great that you cannot walk it in an afternoon."

You looked up at him. His face was open and earnest, his mismatched eyes soft with concern, and you could see the care he had put into this, he way he had thought through every objection, every fear, every reason you might say no.

"And what would I do here?" you asked. "In this castle. What would my life be?"

"You would learn," he said. "How to be a dragonrider. A true dragonrider. Not just someone who clings to Moonfyre's back and hopes for the best, but someone who knows how to fly and fight and command. There are books in the library—old books, from before the Dance, written by dragonriders for their children. There are records of techniques, of commands, of ways to bond with your dragon that have been forgotten for generations. You could learn all of it. You could become something the realm has not seen in seventy years."

"And beyond that? When I am not flying?"

He smiled, a small, private smile that crinkled the corners of his eyes. "Beyond that, you could learn whatever you wished. History. Languages. Music. Statecraft. You have a sharp mind—my father said so himself. You could put it to use. You could become a lady who impresses the King when he finally arrives and sees Moonfyre for himself. You could become someone who does not feel out of place at a supper table with six forks."

"There were only three forks."

"Three forks tonight. There will be more at the Red Keep."

You laughed despite yourself, a soft huff of air that was half exhaustion and half something warmer. "You are very good at this."

"At what?"

"Making me feel as though the world is not quite so terrifying as I thought it was."

His expression softened. He leaned down and pressed a kiss to your forehead, his lips warm and brief against your skin. "I am only telling you the truth. You are not alone in this. You never have to be alone again. Whatever you decide—whether you stay in the village or move to the castle or fly off on Moonfyre and never come back—I will be there. I will take care of Marta. I will take care of you. That is not a negotiation. It is a promise."

You reached up and touched his face, your fingers tracing the line of his jaw, the curve of his cheekbone, the place where his dark hair gave way to that single silver streak. He closed his eyes at the touch, leaning into it like a cat seeking warmth.

"Stay," you said. "Tonight. Just stay."

"I was not planning to leave."

"Good." You tugged him back down to the pillows, settling yourself against his side with your head on his shoulder and your hand over his heart. His arm wrapped around you, solid and steady, and his lips pressed once more to the top of your head.

"Goodnight, Y/N," he murmured.

"Goodnight, Valarr."

The fire crackled. The waves crashed. And somewhere deep in the mountain, a dragon slept in a warm cave, dreaming of the sky.

Trending Tags

Last Seen Tags

#valarr

Trending Tags

Last Seen Tags

#valarr